An Introductory Critique
of Presuppositionalism
Anton
Thorn
In
the effort to fortify my overall critique of presuppositional apologetics, I
consider it necessary to begin my assessment of presuppositionalism by
reviewing a description of what it entails as understood by its defenders.
Hence, I have chosen to examine and critique James M. Harrison's short
introduction The Presuppositional Apologetic, which undertakes the task of
identifying in broad terms what presuppositionalism is, what its defenders
consider to be its task or purpose, and the tactics and strategies by which its
practitioners hope to achieve its goal.
Presuppositionalist
as opposed to Evidentialist Apologetics:
Mr.
Harrison opens his brief essay with the following statement:
That
which I will attempt to describe in this article is known as
presuppositionalism. It is an apologetic method which has had the most impact
in Reformed circles, and is most closely associated with Cornelius Van Till,
John Frame, and the late Greg Bahnsen. [sic]
On
these words I deem it safe to proceed on the basis that what I shall herein
examine conforms closely to at least one presuppositionalist's understanding of
what in fact presuppositionalism is. As an apologetic method of
relatively recent development (each of the individuals named lived above in the
20th century), presuppositionalism is a means of defending the
Christian faith, which means: a system of arguments and argumentative
strategies by which believers can work to strengthen their own adherence to
their god-belief and endeavor to persuade non-believers to conversion at the
same time.
Presuppositional
apologetics can be distinguished from more traditional apologetic methods,
known broadly as "evidentialism" in
contrast to presuppositionalism. The essential distinction between these two
methods seems mainly to include, respectively, their starting points in the
apologetic venture, their approaches to non-belief, and their assumptions about
potential commonality between believers and non-believers.
As
one source defines it,
The
Evidentialist (that branch of Apologetics that
believes there is evidence of one kind or another that demands that the
unbeliever accepts not only Theism but Christian Theism) has a different task.
Whereas the Presuppositionalist can deal with the matter of belief from a
Dogmatic standpoint, the Evidentialist must review
physical evidence in the Natural World. [1]
From
the contrast identified here, the essential distinction is one of starting
points: For the evidentialist approach, the starting
point is the natural world, and for the presuppositionalist, the starting point
is grounded in theological assumptions, which means, we shall find: no
initiating reference to reality. I take "a Dogmatic standpoint" to be
one which is accepted unquestioningly, which means: the surrender of
one's own use of reason in the acceptance of ideational content claimed
to be true by others. We shall find in my overall examination that
unquestioning dogmatic commitments, commitments to ideas which have no basis in
objective reality, asserted without any rational evidence, and accepted at the
expense of one's own ability to reason effectively on an objective basis, are
the essential anchor of presuppositionalism.
That
presuppositionalism as such begins with an explicitly dogmatic bias should be
no surprise, given the nature of its task and the "goods" its
practitioners believe they are defending. This is announced by one of presuppositionalism's most notable personalities, apologist
Greg Bahnsen, when he claims that God's "word and character are not
questionable." [2] No doubt Bahnsen and those like
him take their self-abnegating cue from the founder of Christianity himself,
the apostle Paul, who wrote, "let God be true,
but every man a liar." (Romans 3:4) Naturally, such a principle, if
accepted and practiced consistently, would necessarily cause us to discount
Paul, Bahnsen and virtually all believers in this code, since, they tell us, as
men they are liars. After all, as a Christian and thus as someone who accepts
such teaching unquestioningly, the presuppositionalist is himself attempting to
persuade us to accept the very code which explicitly warns us of its very
source! I am happy to heed that warning.
The
issue of non-belief, according to presuppositionalism, has a two-fold
problematic nature. First, it is the consequence of "sin" - or,
disobedience of God's laws or commandments. If God's commandment is to believe
in Him, then naturally disbelief in God constitutes an infraction of that
commandment and thus results in sin. Man's metaphysical nature, claim
presuppositionalists, is naturally sinful, i.e., amorally depraved.
Presuppositionalism
and Its Condemnation of Intellectual
Does
the fact that presuppositionalism distinguishes itself from evidentialist
apologetics mean that presuppositionalism dispenses completely with the use of
evidence in constructing its arguments? On this point, Mr. Harrison states:
I
should begin by pointing out that the Presuppositional Apologetic does not
discount the use of evidences in apologetic reasoning. It does not use
evidences in the traditional manner, however. By the traditional manner, I mean
using evidences as an appeal to the authority of the unbeliever's autonomous
reasoning.
In
other words, presuppositionalism relies on supposed 'evidences' which
non-believers are not likely or anticipated to accept in the first place. This
admission leads to the crucial question at this point: What is the working
definition of 'evidence' for that which the presuppositional apologetic asserts
as evidence? And, what is the source of that definition? And what specifically
is "an appeal to the authority of the unbeliever's autonomous
reasoning," and what cautionary advice does the apologist have in regard
to it?
Mr.
Harrison claims:
The
problem is, of course, that the unbeliever cannot reason autonomously.
A
position which is met throughout much of presuppositionalism is the assumption
that man cannot "reason autonomously," which Mr. Harrison repeats
here. According to apologist James Anderson, 'autonomous' in the sense intended
by presuppositional apologetics is taken to mean "that the final point of
reference and interpretation is to be located in the mind of man rather than
the mind of God -- man is a 'law unto himself' in the epistemological
arena." [3] What Mr. Anderson's definition of this
problematic term assumes is that "the final point of reference" in
man's reasoning must locate itself in a mind, essentially in a form of
consciousness, rather than in the facts of reality.
If
"the final point of reference" to one's reasoning must find itself in
a form of consciousness, of what then is that form of consciousness said to be
conscious of? Consciousness is consciousness of something, which means
in the present context that consciousness requires a reference point. We
already know that god-belief essentially asserts the existence of a form of
consciousness which must create the objects of its own consciousness, and thus
god-belief essentially boils down to divine solipsism. And from a cosmological
and epistemological perspective, such ideas commit at their very basis the
fallacy of pure self-reference. [4]
Thus,
the view that "the final point of reference" of man's reasoning
"is to be located in [either] the mind of man [or in] the mind of
God," commits a false dichotomy, for it arbitrarily ignores or eliminates
the facts of reality from one's selection of "final point[s] of
reference." The Objectivist solution to all this is to recognize that
existence holds primacy over consciousness, and that consciousness is conscious
of something, which means: consciousness requires an object outside itself, and
therefore the "final point of reference" to reason must also be out
external to one's consciousness as well (including God's, even though by now
the invalidity of the idea of God should be apparent).
To
investigate the presuppositionalist idea of intellectual autonomy, I cite
apologist Greg Bahnsen:
The
Christian's final standard, the inspired word of God, teaches us that "the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7). If the
apologist treats the starting point of knowledge as something other than
reverence for God, then unconditional submission to the unsurpassed greatness
of God's wisdom at the end of his argumentation does not really make sense.
There would always be something greater than God's wisdom - namely, the
supposed wisdom of one's own chosen, intellectual starting point. The word of
God would necessarily (logically, if not personally) remain subordinate to that
autonomous, final standard. [5]
That
presuppositionalism considers intellectual autonomy as it defines it to be
anathema to sound philosophical doctrine, is clear. That the definition of this
term and the presuppositionalist's repugnance for what it means both assume
that the Christian God exists, should also be clear.
Notice
the emphasis on Proverbs 1:7 which the apologist repeats here. Notice precisely
what that verse states: that emotion should hold epistemological primacy to
knowledge, for it is in emotion which one must ground knowledge. It is no
ordinary emotion, however, we are told by believers; "fear of God" is
no emotion lacking earthshaking profundity, they claim. Indeed, philosophically
the primacy of emotion over knowledge follows after the primacy of
consciousness over existence; psychologically this fear is required to provide
the tenor of the mind-game which accompanies god-belief. But the reversal -
that knowledge should spring from emotion rather than emotion springing from
new knowledge as measured against our values - is explicitly endorsed by
Christian theism.
Those
who defend god-belief programs are encouraged not to wince at this reversal,
but to never fail in grounding his knowledge in emotion, for what follows will
"not really make sense." And to caution believers and apologists that
assuming any other standard to knowledge outside the emotion evoked by the
Bible's claims against man's rationality should lead to the assumption of
"something greater than God's wisdom" - perhaps even a healthy
self-esteem - comports precisely with the apologetic system's desired internal
results: a mind scared out of its wits and desperate to argue any absurdity in
order to relieve the petrifying tensions induced by the fear so enshrined by
such verses.
In
other words, fear is the root of Christian philosophy, and thus
cognition is primarily a matter of emotional compulsion, according to
this view. If the believer were not compelled emotionally by Christian fear and
threats of doom, then the believer's adherence to Christian doctrine would necessarily
be a matter of personal volition. In other words, his commitment to
Christianity would be a consequence of his epistemological and moral choices,
which are here considered by presuppositionalism to be a product of man's
intellectual autonomy. And here we find specifically what presuppositionalism
is intended to deny and render impotent from its very foundations: Man's
volitional nature. This view of man and his philosophy cannot succeed in
this universe because it relies directly on one's emotions as if they were
irreducible primaries, and because it blatantly abnegates the objective,
hierarchical nature of knowledge and the nature of reason entirely. Hence the mystic's motivation to insist on his stolen concepts and
other philosophical errors from the very outset of his philosophy.
Denying identity always results in fallacy and always requires additional
fallacies in order to defend such denial.
Essentially,
the presuppositionalist's objection to the non-believer's intellectual autonomy
amounts to a rejection of reason, for it attempts to deny the very capacity
which makes reason possible for man, which is his volition. Man has the choice
to use reason or to ignore, reject or confound it. Should he use reason, he
must use reason by choice. As Ayn Rand
explains,
Reason
is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's
senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is
not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to
think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused
awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness is volitional. Man can focus
his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality - or he
can unfocus it and let himself drift in a
semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate
moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any
random, associational connections it might happen to make. [6]
But
can the presuppositionalist separate man's ability to reason from his choice to
use reason? Can he divorce man's volition from his nature? Can the Christian's
condemnation of man's nature annul his need for reason, and/or his need to
embrace reason by choice? Can the presuppositionalist establish reason
as proceeding from the basis of emotional compulsion, which one of the most
adept and oft-quoted of Christian apologists admits to be the very basis of
Christian theism?
On
all accounts, Objectivism recognizes that the presuppositionalist's goal of
denying man's volitional nature and the volitional nature of man's use of
reason is a self-defeating endeavor, whose goal is to destroy man, not liberate
him from some alleged spiritual contamination or depravity as its defenders
claim. The view of man entailed in presuppositionalism is not a rational being
capable of achieving happiness on earth and creating values, but its direct
opposite: a mindless lump of flesh wracked with inescapable guilt and destined
for an eternity of torment.
This
is consistent with
What
is the nature of the guilt that your teacher's call [man's] Original Sin? What
are the evils man acquired when he fell from the state they consider
perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge
- he acquired a mind and became a rationaal being. It was the knowledge of good
and evil - he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his
labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire -
he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him
are reason, morality, creativeness, joy - all the
cardinal virtues of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's
fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as
his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was - that robot
in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor,
without love - he was not man. [7]
It
is no surprise that the mystic, in the defense of his religious claims, will
insist that others reject their capacity to reason. After all, Kant himself
admitted that he must "deny knowledge in order to make room for faith."
[8]
Now
ask what motivates the presuppositionalist's insistence on verses like Proverbs
1:7. Bahnsen states it quite clearly: that man should discount his own ability
to reason ("autonomous reasoning"), and submit his mind to others in
unquestioning obedience. This obedience is to be practiced, not in the interest
of achieving some legitimate goal (indeed, a rational man achieves his values,
not as a dependent on others, but by relying on the verdicts of his own free
and uncoerced mind), but out of "fear and
trembling" (cf. Ephesians 6:5, et al.).
Read
for "unconditional submission to the unsurpassed greatness of God's
wisdom" as unquestioning acceptance of biblical claims and assertions,
even if such unquestioning submission should proceed at the expense of
objectivity (which all such mysticism will ultimately require of an
individual). Thus, what presuppositionalism seeks in man is not a rational
being, but a mindless robot, just as we find in the Adam of the Genesis myth.
Essentially it says to man: "Don't think that you can reason on your own
to discover truth, we already possess it, just believe what we tell you."
And
what exactly does this accomplish? Essentially one thing: To disable man's mind
and reduce him to a willing victim ready for any demagogue who comes along and
claims to have "the answer" to the despair and emptiness the
acceptance of such views fosters in his life. Once these anti-rational, anti-human
premises are accepted in the place of reason and knowledge of reality, any man
will have no defense against any Witch Doctor who seeks to fill the vacuum
where before he had the potential for an independent mind and a life of value
achievement. This is not a doctrine of love and mercy, as it defenders claim,
but a doctrine of misery and envy. And to counteract the believer's recognition
of the nature of such doctrines, he is told that man can never have an
independent mind, and that to aspire to any reasoning disapproved by those
dictating the doctrine is a mortal sin.
Now
the goal for the presuppositionalist is, to turn those who do not believe into
those who do. And to do this he will begin by attacking the non-believer's
independent mind, condemning it precisely for what it is. But can the apologist
claim that "the unbeliever cannot reason autonomously" to be true
apart from simply assuming it to be the case? What we have here is a tangled
web of assumptions which are deeply interdependent upon each other, but which
cannot be coherently established without the presumption of the primacy of
consciousness view of reality, which is both false and integral to Christian
theism.
Mr.
Harrison claims:
Without
God, there would be no possibility of reason.
This
is essentially a mere assertion which the apologist must prove in order for it
to have any intellectual merit whatsoever. Simply asserting this claim does not
make it true. But notice how ironic this statement is in light of the foregoing
discussion. Man's ability to reason independently from others is not in dispute
for the Objectivist. However, it is for the presuppositionalist. Since
Christianity (and therefore presuppositionalism) essentially considers man to
be a mindless robot, as we saw above, its defenders set before themselves the
task of reducing those who do think and reason independently of others, to the
robot-like victims (the Bible's metaphoric use of "sheep" for its
believers is no accident) it enshrines as the initial model for man, which is
Adam. While the presuppositionalist holds that "without God, there would
be no possibility of reason," he defends a system of philosophy which
destroys man's ability to reason at its very roots: by claiming that he must
surrender his mind to unconditional submission, and by rooting his knowledge in
referenceless, contentless
emotions.
Mr.
Harrison now repeats a common presuppositionalist claim:
And
so the reality of the matter is that every time the unbeliever attempts to
reason, he is borrowing from the Christian worldview.
The
truth of this claim depends on the supposed truth of a number of assumptions,
which include, for instance:
How
does the apologist demonstrate that assumption 1) is warranted? Where is the
claim that the Christian God exists proven to be fact? Where is the apologist's
proof?
How
does the apologist demonstrate that assumption 2) is warranted? What exactly is
the connection between the Christian God and reason? And for that matter, what
is the apologist's working definition of reason? What is the source of that
definition? Is the source of that definition found in the Bible? If so, in
which book, chapter and verse is that definition found? If the definition of
reason preferred by the apologist is not found in the Bible, then what is its
source? Is the source something admitted by the apologist to have been written
by men? If so, why should this definition be accepted,
particularly in light of the apologist's own declared premise, that man cannot
reason autonomously? [9]
And
finally, how does the apologist demonstrate that assumption 3) is warranted?
The apologist claims that all men are aware of God's existence, but, citing
verses like Romans 1:20-21, that men are prone to "suppress" this
awareness. What are the means of this alleged awareness? How does the apologist
prove that I am aware of God, when I know that I am aware of no such being,
neither have I any means of being aware of anything supernatural? Indeed, the
assertion of the supernatural is always arbitrary and always premature.
Moreover,
how can it be the case that I am “borrowing from the Christian worldview” when
I make no appeals to any supernatural beings in order to discover truths about
reality and affirm them in my understanding of the world? I make no appeals to
an omniscient creator which fashioned the world according to some preconceived
design, and the metaphysics of my worldview are completely at odds with such
assumptions, by virtue of its commitment to the primacy of existence.
But
in spite of these problems,
That
is, he is being inconsistent with his stated presuppositions.
And
here is where the presuppositionalist's presuppositions become blatantly
presumptuous. For here he presumes to insert into the mouths of non-believers
philosophical ideas to which they are supposedly committed by virtue of their
rejection of Christianity. This is quite amazing. Which presuppositions has the
atheist stated, and how can the believer presume that he is being
inconsistent with those presuppositions? The apologist still has not proven
that there is a God, nor does he ever do this. Instead, he continues to attack
non-believers as if this "proven fact" of God's existence were
clearly apparent to all. This, however, is not the case. The apologist here
attempts to cut in line, so to say, as if owning up to the onus of proving his
own claims were unnecessary, superfluous or simply not required.
And
that is the crucial point.
The
"crucial point" is that the non-believer "is being inconsistent
with his stated presuppositions"? It is one thing for a non-believer to be
shown to be inconsistent with any of his implicitly or explicitly held
premises, an entirely different matter for those who claim that God exists to
prove this claim. Demonstrating that a non-believer is inconsistent with his
own premises does not prove that God exists, nor can such a demonstration
substitute for such a proof. If the apologist's only goal is to demonstrate
some inconsistency on the part of others, then he fails to accept the onus of
proving his own extraordinary claims, and this in itself should raise a red
flag for those who expect intellectual integrity from one's supposed
philosophic rivals.
Ultimately
the intellectual conflict between believers and unbelievers is a matter of
antithetical worldviews.
Such
a comparison depends on the fundamentals of the worldviews to which any two
individuals ascribe, assuming they are different. In particular, how does one's
worldview address the issue of metaphysical primacy? Indeed, does one's
worldview even demonstrate explicit awareness of this fundamental and
inescapable issue, or must any position on this issue be inferred from loftier
philosophical ideas which arise if this issue is only implicitly acknowledged
while one's position on this matter remains unclearly assumed? Where for
instance does the New Testament author Paul address the issue of metaphysical
primacy in any certain, explicit and self-conscious terms, and is Christian
theism as a whole consistent with any position on whichever position on this
issue can be inferred or derived from Paul's writings? I personally have pored
over Paul's writings in the New Testament, and nowhere does Paul articulate any
explicitly informed position on the issue of metaphysical primacy (indeed, he
expresses no explicit awareness for this issue as such anywhere in his
writings), and what can be derived or inferred from Paul's writings is at best
a hazy understanding of the issues at stake. However, his writings graphically
affirm the primacy of consciousness of reality, which is false, and which
chokes religious philosophy throughout.
Furthermore,
it may be the case that a particular non-believer may reject Christian
theism, but may still assume the primacy of consciousness and thus share a
common basis with Christian theism at the expense of objectivity. This is far
from uncommon in our culture today, because of the influence of the explicit
subjectivism and mysticism of Christianity and errant philosophies akin to it.
The
essence of the Presuppositional Apologetic is the attempt to show that the
unbeliever's worldview drives him to subjectivity, irrationalism, and moral
anarchy.
Indeed,
subjectivity, irrationalism and moral anarchy which most of those who are
hindered by such philosophical vices inherited from Christianity in the first
place! But what should be noted here is that the "essence of the
Presuppositional Apologetic" - according to this sympathetic source,
preoccupies itself with what others presumably hold as true, not with
substantiating its own philosophical positions and meeting the burden of
proving its god-belief claims. The establishment of Reformed Christian theism
is, for the presuppositionalist, a foregone conclusion lacking rational merit
and positive argumentative support. Presuppositionalism can thus be seen as a
negating device through and through, not a device to identify truth.
Rising
to the Challenge: Worldviews Side-by-Side
Mr.
Harrison makes the following clarification of the presuppositional method:
And
so the Presuppositional Apologetic calls for the Christian and non-Christian to
set side by side their two worldviews and do an internal examination of them
both in order to determine whether or not they are consistent even within their
own framework.
This
is a great idea, and a challenge to which I exhort all Christian apologists to
rise. Below I offer an at-a-glance chart outlining Christian theism as opposed
to Objectivism, the philosophy of Reason:
|
CHRISTIANITY |
PHILSOPHICAL DOCTRINE |
OBJECTIVISM |
|
Subjective (product of consciousness) |
Nature of Reality |
Objective, (existence is independent of consciousness) |
|
Created by consciousness, non-absolute, secondary |
Nature of Existence |
Absolute, uncreated, indestructible, primary |
|
Primacy of Consciousness |
Metaphysical Primacy |
Primacy of Existence |
|
Object of creation and subject to conscious revision |
Laws of Nature |
Axiomatic - rooted in fact, undeniable and inescapable |
|
Total Depravity |
The Nature of Man |
Volitional Rationality |
|
Creative, reality-shaping, metaphysically active |
Nature of Consciousness |
Awareness, Identification, metaphysically passive |
|
Creates its objects |
Activity of consciousness |
Perceives its objects |
|
"Fear God" (mystical presuppositions; Prov. 1:7) |
Cognitive starting point of knowledge |
Existence exists (Objectivist axioms) |
|
Alleged historical events, secondhand |
Substance of Philosophy |
Facts of reality, firsthand |
|
Man serves the philosophy |
Rôle of Philosophy for Man |
Philosophy serves Man |
|
Stolen concepts, frozen abstractions, compart-mentalized primaries, etc. |
Nature of knowledge |
Hierarchical, contextual and integrated reference to reality |
|
Alleged revelations, knowledge by no means |
Source of knowledge |
Perceptual contact with existence |
|
Mysticism (whose method is faith) |
Means of Knowledge |
Reason (whose method is logic) |
|
Threats: "believe, or go to hell" |
Validation |
"Look at reality" (hierarchical reduction) |
|
Self-sacrifice |
Ethics |
Self-interest |
|
Faith |
Knowledge of Morality |
Rationality |
|
Mystical Beliefs and obedience |
Means of Morality |
Rational Principle in Action |
|
Humility |
Virtue |
Pride |
|
Achievement of approval |
Purpose of Virtue |
Achievement of values |
|
Faith, Obedience, self-sacrifice |
Cardinal Values |
Reason, Purpose, Self-esteem |
|
Man as a Means to the Ends of Others |
The Good |
Man as an End in Himself |
|
Denial of Oneself; suffering; death |
Man's Goal |
Achievement of value; Happiness |
|
Collectivism |
Politics |
Capitalism |
|
Individual must sacrifice himself to the collective (e.g., the churchgoer) |
Practice |
Individual has the right to exist for his own sake (e.g., the businessman) |
|
Enshrinement of the incomprehensible |
Esthetics |
Concretization of one's own values |
Above
we see precisely what the apologist asks for: a side-by-side comparison of the
major tenets of Christianity and Objectivism. Let us examine each briefly, one
by one.
Under
the headings "Nature of Reality" and "Nature of Existence,"
we find that Christianity considers reality to be subjective, while
Objectivism considers reality to be objective. Subjectivism in
metaphysics is the view that existence finds its source in a form or act of
consciousness. This view is explicitly stated in the Christian doctrine of
creation - the view that the world and the cosmos, i.e., the universe, were created
by the "supreme being's divine will," i.e., by an act of
consciousness. Reality, according to this view, is a derivative, not a primary,
and subject to revision by the will of the ruling consciousness, which
according to Christianity is God.
If
existence is a product of conscious creation, then it cannot be fundamental,
primary or absolute. Instead, it must be secondary and non-absolute, again
subject to revision by the ruling consciousness. [10]
If,
according to Christianity, reality (i.e., the realm of existence) finds its
source in a form or act of consciousness, then reality cannot be the
Christian's cognitive starting point. Consequently, the believer must assert
God (i.e., a form of consciousness) as metaphysically primary, and his fear
of God as his cognitive starting point, the one factor which guides and
tempers the believer's thinking (if it can be called that), just as Paul
exhorts believers to "bring every thought captive to the obedience of
Christ" (II Corinthians 10:5). Christ, argues
apologist Greg Bahnsen, "must be the ultimate authority over our
philosophy, our reasoning, and our argumentation -- not just at the end, but at
the beginning, of the apologetical endeavor." [11] This
is why we saw Bahnsen emphasize the knowledge-emotion reversal entailed by
Proverbs 1:7 above. Miss Rand eloquently pointed out the cause of this fear
when she wrote, "When men abandon reason, they find that not only that
their emotions cannot guide them, but that they can experience no emotions save
one: terror." [12] The cause of this terror is
deliberately misidentified as "God" and the religious doctrines of
god-belief assume the task of guiding believers where their emotions have
failed them.
If
the nature of reality is subjective (i.e., a product of a form or act of
consciousness), and the nature of existence is secondary to that consciousness,
then consciousness holds metaphysical primacy over existence, since existence
(reality) must ultimately be thought to conform to the will of consciousness
(either man's or God's or both). Thus, Christian theism explicitly endorses the
primacy of consciousness, even though its theologians and apologists resist
this identification.
On
the other hand, in all philosophical matters, Objectivism recognizes the
primacy of existence, which holds that existence exists independent of
consciousness (e.g., the facts of reality are facts of reality regardless of
one's conscious functions or desires), that existence is absolute, uncreated,
indestructible and primary, and that consciousness is consciousness of something,
i.e., of existence. Which means: consciousness is not independent of existence,
which means that consciousness presupposes existence, as recognized by
the question: Consciousness of what?
While
Objectivism holds that at least implicit recognition of the primacy of
existence is unavoidable in all cognition, Christian theism holds that
cognition is doomed ultimately to failure if it does not somehow reduce to the
subjective commitments of Christian metaphysics (hence the development of
presuppositionalism). And here the Christian can be shown to contradict
himself, for in order to claim that Christianity is true, he must assume that
truth is independent of consciousness, thus implicitly inferring the primacy of
existence. But what the Christian claims to be true is the primacy of
consciousness, which is in contradiction to the primacy of existence. Thus even
to claim that "God exists," the Christian contradicts himself. [13]
The
apologist, perhaps sensing these problems internal to Christianity, attempts to
get around them by claiming that the ultimate source of his knowledge is divine
revelation, which precludes objectivity by preempting the rôle
of perception in man's initial cognitive steps in forming his first philosophy
(i.e., in determining essentials, the nature of existence, the nature of man,
the nature of consciousness, the nature of knowledge, etc.). As a result, alleged
historical events (e.g., the creation and fall of Adam, worldwide flood, Abrahamic covenants, Mosaic stutterings,
monarchical decrees, allegedly fulfilled prophecies, virgin births,
resurrections, miraculous healings, etc.) are asserted as superior to the
perceptual facts of reality as pertinent to the formation of a comprehensive
view of life. Thus, we find that the thrust of many apologetic tactics
emphasizes issues calling on the non-believer's certainty in his ability to
identify the facts of reality and to deduce from them principles relevant to
living his life. [14] Thus, the actual "substance"
which informs Christian philosophy are the alleged historical events claimed to
have occurred in the Old and New Testaments. Even the apostle Paul acknowledges
this to be the case with Christianity when he writes, "if Christ be not
risen [i.e., if the alleged history of Christ's resurrection is false], then is
our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain [i.e., the whole
Christian theistic philosophy is invalid]." (I Corinthians 15:14) [15]
In
contradistinction to this view of philosophy, Objectivism holds true regardless
of what historical events have taken place, alleged or actual. For no matter
whatever event has occurred or when - 20, 200 or 2000 years ago, it is still an
undeniable, fundamental fact that existence exists, that to exist is to be
something (i.e., that existence is identity), that consciousness is not the
creator of reality, but a perceiver of the objects which exist, that
consciousness has an objective identity and that man's reason requires that he
begin with the perceptually self-evident facts of reality. These facts, which
form the basis of the philosophy of reason, are not dependent upon the
legitimacy of some claimed historical event. On the contrary, one cannot even
begin to comprehend historical claims without taking these facts at least
implicitly for granted.
The
insistence that alleged historical events should hold priority over the facts
of reality which are available to man through his own perception and reasoning,
amounts to the view that the only proper philosophy is that which is acquired secondhand
(or third- and fourth-hand). That secondhand (or further removed) allegations
and stories should hold primacy over those facts which are presently available
to man through his perception means that he must be willing to abandon his own
reasoning in order to accept what he's been told is true. Thus, reason is
jettisoned in favor of faith, and irrationality is embraced in reason's place.
Moving
along in our side-by-side comparison of Christianity with Objectivism, we come
to the question of what is the nature and source of knowledge. Of course, when
considering such questions as what is the nature and source of knowledge, an
obvious question which is often overlooked and unattended is the question, Knowledge
of what? For Objectivism, knowledge is knowledge of reality, or, knowledge
of existence. By addressing such a question from the outset, we recognize
the object of our epistemological pursuits, in this case the facts of reality
themselves, and this in turn helps us identify the nature of that knowledge and
how we come to know it.
It
is unlikely that seasoned apologists for religious philosophies will claim that
the object of their knowledge is the unreal or the non-existent.
So when pressed on such matters, it is anticipated that the apologist will also
claim that his knowledge is, like the Objectivist's,
knowledge of reality as well (though I have not seen this stated by defenders
of theistic philosophies myself). This then brings us to the question of what
the religious believer considers to be reality, how 'reality' is defined, and
by what means it is discovered and identified. But already above we saw that
the theist holds reality to be a creation, that reality is created by a form of
consciousness, since existence according to Christianity (and its theistic
cousins) finds its source in a form of consciousness. Thus, for the Christian,
if reality is a creation of God, then knowledge is invention, not
identification. And the unraveling (I dare say evolution) of this invented
knowledge is the task of theology proper. For "ultimate knowledge,"
claim many apologists, is knowledge of God, and, as we discover through
Objectivism, God is the creation of men, not the other way around (hence so
many fractious internal debates within close religious quarters causing division
and evasion among even creed-driven religious institutions).
In
Objectivism we learn of the principle of the primacy of the what
over the how, which means: the means by which we are attempting to
discover and identify something are determined by and subordinate to the
identity of that something. This epistemological prioritization is an extension
of the primacy of existence, that the what (existence) holds primacy
over the how (the means) of cognition (i.e., of consciousness). This is
not a license to use reason in some cases and abandon it in others (as some
apologists would have it; think of the so-called “crackers in the pantry”
fallacy which Bahnsen accuses Gordon Stein of committing in their debate).
Rather, the nature of the object(s) whose identity is sought to be understood
determines how one should apply his reason in achieving the goal of such
knowledge. Thus, the process by which knowledge of reality is achieved
is consistent with the metaphysical roots of the view of reality which enables
it. If, for instance, what an individual seeks to determine is the distance
between two planetary bodies (the what of his
epistemological quest), he naturally must employ a means which will enable him
to discover this, such as a telescope. If he seeks to determine how two
molecules interact under certain conditions, an electron microscope may be the
proper tool. Both telescopes and electron microscopes are means of extending
man’s perceptual faculty beyond their unaided ability. Thus, the Objectivist
view of knowledge is completely consistent with its view of reality, that
existence holds metaphysical primacy over consciousness.
In
the case of religion, however, the means of acquiring knowledge commits a
reversal of objectivity, just as its view of reality is a reversal of
metaphysical Objectivism. Religion’s epistemology, to the extent that it can be
said to have any epistemology, essentially embodies the primacy of one’s hopes
over what actually exists, and therefore over what is actually true.
This is where ‘faith’ comes in: it allows the believer to ignore the facts of
reality and point to an elaborate fantasy in their place. There is no concept
of objectivity here, for the objects of consciousness vary according to what
consciousness desires them to be. A stick is a staff one moment, a slithering
serpent the next. A man is blind one moment, and seeing the next. Pots are full
of water one moment, and wine the next. What makes these alterations possible?
According to reality, a consciousness endowed with sufficient faith: it wants
these things to be the case, and they obey accordingly. For proving and
validating his claims, the theist appeals to threats or to apologetic
treatments, such as "transcendental arguments," which are no more
arguments whose task it is to establish the truth of some allegation than they
are means of undermining the psychological confidence of non-believers and
"persuading" them to consider the assaults used in this effort as
philosophically valid.
All
of these points, the religious and the Objectivist, follow as a matter of
course from their respective premises and fundamental view of existence. Hence
the apologist will claim that his presuppositional beliefs exhibit a
consistency unknown to non-believers, for indeed he is as consistent as he dare
can be to the primacy of consciousness roots of his god-belief. For not only
does he proceed philosophically on the assumption that presumed
knowledge equals valid knowledge (as if consciousness could dictate at
whim what standard knowledge should presume), he proceeds apologetically on the
assumption that persuading others of his god-belief claims can substitute for
proof of those claims; that so long as others accept his claims, he must be
arguing efficiently to the truth.
So
here we have precisely what the apologist himself invites, a side-by-side
comparison between his worldview (Christianity) and that of the consistently
rational atheist (Objectivism). It is unlikely that most apologists will accept
the terms so far given, for they indeed stifle the stereotypical atheist which most apologists have been groomed to expect, and which
the presuppositional apologetic strategies have been groomed to parody, in an
encounter with a non-believer. But suffice it to say, we have now identified
what in Christian theism constitutes a threat to man's mind, as well as the
means by which he can protect himself from that threat. [16]
Since
God does exist, and since Christianity is true, then any worldview which denies
these truths are false and can be demonstrated to be so.
Again,
such a statement depends on an enormous set of assumptions, both explicitly and
implicitly held by the apologist. He would do well to check his premises objectively. [17]
The
Baiting Nature of Presuppositionalism:
Consider
deeply the following two paragraphs:
And
so, on a practical basis, the first thing to do in a Presuppositional
Apologetic is just that which an evidential apologist would not spend a great
amount of time on. We listen. We let the unbeliever talk and we let him
describe his worldview (i.e., the nature of reality, how the world operates,
where it came from, man's place in the world, man's nature, the absence or
existence of moral absolutes and the foundation of such, how do we know things
and can we know things with certainty, etc.).
The
more the unbeliever talks, the more we have to work with. Since his worldview
is objectively false, it of necessity contains contradictions (i.e., morality
is relative, but he does not live his life on that basis). Morality is
absolute, but he cannot account for absolutes without God. We can have
knowledge through empirical observation, but he cannot empirically observe that
he can have knowledge through empirical observation, etc.
Here
we find the heart of the presuppositionalist's apologetic strategy. Notice how,
according to the presuppositionalist's own words, the emphasis and purpose of
his apologetic is not to establish a proof for the sake of establishing the
truth of his claims to the non-believer. Instead, the emphasis lies explicitly
in criticizing the non-believer for his views, waiting like a spider for a fly
to entrap himself in his web of deception, dishonesty, reversal and fallacy.
What
should be clear here is that the emphasis of the presuppositionalist strategy
is on discrediting non-theism by presumably uncovering a particular individual
non-theist's ignorance or lack of understanding of particular issues in
philosophy. Not only does this strategy proceed on the unproven presupposition
that all worldviews outside the Reformed Christian philosophy are
"objectively false," it betrays this apologetic method's reluctance
to meet the burden of proving its own god-belief claims. This evasion is
encountered throughout the presuppositional apologetic.
This
discrediting process is initialized by literally baiting the non-believer into
verbalizing both the fundamentals as well as the finer points of his worldview,
something which most individuals are (both unfortunately and understandably)
unprepared to do, be they theist or atheist. In the case of those non-believers
who are untutored in the weightier issues of philosophy - and this describes a
vast majority of people, such individuals can be "easy pickins"
for craftier apologists.
Mr.
Harrison here announces that apologists should be keenly aware of any
opportunity in which they can goad a prospective proselyte into philosophically
tripping himself up as apologists "let him describe his worldview."
The use of recondite, sesquipedalian jargon, which is the calling card of many
a presuppositionalist (the more academic apologists love to season their rhetoric
with dashes of Latin), provides the apologist with a convenient means of
bamboozling non-believers into unintentional - and perhaps inaccurate and
unrepresentative - self-incrimination and philosophical confusion. The
apologetic encounter, for the presuppositionalist, can be likened to a wolf
zeroing in on his prey. The ensuing philosophical carnage, to continue the
metaphor, is indeed gruesome.
Does
the apologist presume that the non-believer faced with the challenge of
providing a foolproof, yet thumbnail sketch of his worldview, will entrap
himself without the apologist's own assistance? Mr.
On
the contrary, the apologist’s tactic is not to listen, but to bait
and coax, to manipulate and to entrap. In fact, listening
is precisely what they tend not to do, at least not charitably. If they
listen, they listen only as a means of gathering material that can be
refashioned into easily demolished stunt doubles. The presuppositionalist’s
apologetic practice exposes his true ambition. It is not to understand his
opponent’s position and reason with him, as if he truly cared for his
intellectual integrity. On the contrary, that intention is to destroy his
self-esteem, his purpose and his confidence in his ability to reason.
Compromise a man’s integrity to the point that it collapses into a shapeless goo, and you have the
perfect candidate for the enslavement of god-belief.
It
is upon this rubble – what used to be human – that
Objectivism’s
view of absolutes illustrates the fundamentality of its opposition to the
religious view of the world. According to Objectivism, absolutes are not provided
by consciousness. On the contrary, they are discovered, identified
and understood by means of consciousness. Metaphysically, absolutes are
already implied in perception and the derivation of axiomatic concepts, which
are perceptually based. The axiom rooting Objectivism is: Existence exists.
Objectivism recognizes the axiomatic concept 'existence' - which is the
broadest of all concepts - as essential to all concepts. The fact of existence
is absolute and inescapable. Also, the fact that existence exists does not
change. What "accounts for" the absolute nature of existence is
simply the fact that existence exists. To point to something "prior
to" the fact of existence in order to "account for" it results
in the fallacy of the stolen concept, since the concept 'existence' must be
presupposed by all other concepts, including the concept 'consciousness', which
is the most commonly assumed stolen concept in all theistic metaphysics. It is
this fallacy which often eludes non-objective philosophical detection, since
most people are unaware of the objective view of concepts. And since the
metaphysical starting point for theism is as such fallacious in nature, any
appeal to absolutes, either epistemological or moral, is consequently
compromised and rationally indefensible.
It
is in the fact of existence, the starting point of Objectivism, that an
objective view of epistemological and moral absolutes finds its ultimate basis.
This fact is available to all men through perception and the process of
objective cognition. It is not an idea shrouded in mystery and
incomprehensibility and claimed to be the product of supernatural revelation,
to which only "the chosen" have access. These are the hallmarks of
mysticism, not objectivity. Suffice it to say, the apologist, most likely due
to utter ignorance of Objectivism, is way off the mark in this regard. [18]
When
Mr. Harrison states that, "We can have knowledge through empirical
observation, but he cannot empirically observe that he can have knowledge
through empirical observation...," he ignores a crucial distinction
between the perceptual and the conceptual levels of man's consciousness. The
perceptual level of man's consciousness, on one hand, is not a
volitional form of consciousness. Man cannot choose to feel pleasure when he
passes his finger through a flame any more than he can choose to see
Michelangelo's David in place of Munch's The
Scream. Man's conceptual faculty, on the other hand, is volitional
in nature, as it can be directed by conscious self-regulation and involves an
act of selection from among the data he perceives. This point is that man's
senses
cannot deceive him, that physical objects cannot act without causes, that his
organs of perception are physical and have no volition, no power to invent or
distort, that the evidence they give him is an absolute, but his mind must
learn to understand it, his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full
context of his sensory material, his mind must identify the things that he
perceives. [19]
Common
attacks against the validity of the senses often include pencils which appear
"bent" when placed in a glass of water. But such attacks themselves
must assume the validity of the sensation, for how else would one know that a
pencil is actually straight in the first place? The fact that we perceive what
appears to be a distortion in the pencil's shape only testifies that perception
provides a "full context" of data, including light refraction, of the
objects we perceive. The context of our perception, however, once we get to the
conceptual level of consciousness, can be accepted or rejected in the formation
of our ideas and concepts.
That
man can gain knowledge through his perception while not being able to
"empirically observe that he can have knowledge through empirical
observation," is not problematic for Objectivism. As Dr. Harry Binswanger argues:
The
processing that underlies perception is neurophysiological
and nonintrospectible. When a child sees a table, he
is unaware of the neurophysiological processes, from
the retina on up, that make the percept [of the table] possible, and he had no
choice in the control over the development of those processes; the percept is
for him a direct "given" rather than the product of inference or
interpretation. We learn of the existence of sensory processes only extrospectively, by scientific investigation. [20]
These
reasons only underscore and support the overall view of knowledge informed by
Objectivism. While apologists for philosophies detrimental to man's mind point
to such facts as inconsistencies plaguing certain views, Objectivism recognizes
that such facts are consistent with the objective view of reality and knowledge
informed by its foundations.
It
must be borne in mind that, in general, many presuppositionalists take delight
when non-believers doubt the verdicts of their own mind, particularly when
those verdicts are inconsistent with Christian mysticism, and when they doubt
the foundations of their thought and the methods they incorporate in their
thinking. What the presuppositionalist seeks to disable is the non-believer's
ability to achieve certainty, particularly in fundamentals, and his confidence
in any means by which he achieves any certainty. Quite often,
presuppositionalists will deny that man's perception facilitates a fundamental rôle in the achievement of knowledge, arguing essentially
that even perception as such is not valid without certain conscious
preconditions (or "presuppositions") already in place (such as the
assumption that nature is uniform, etc.).
This
kind of argument is the residue of a devastating but still common
misunderstanding in philosophy, made popular by Immanuel Kant (whose professed
goal was to save religion, mind you). That misunderstanding is the notion that
percepts - the material provided by the senses, are "imported
conceptually" into man's consciousness. This view ultimately reduces both
to the notion that existence finds its source in a form of consciousness (i.e.,
metaphysical subjectivism) - as the perception of reality (i.e., what we
perceive) is thought to originate in the mind ("imported
conceptually"), and to a co-operating fundamental error called the fallacy
of pure self-reference (since consciousness is said to be supplying its own
content divorced from any contact outside itself - because percepts are
"imported conceptually").
Objectivism
corrects this error and finds support for its position in science:
The
truth is that the perceptual level is not imported conceptually, it is not
constructed consciously, it's produced automatically,
without knowledge, without effort, without conscious direction by the brain.
The movement to the perceptual level [from the sensory level] is a physical,
not a conscious [and consequently, not a volitional], integration. To
reach the perceptual level is a neurological development. To experience
entities requires the growth of nerve cells that connect with each other in a
certain way. Now the progression from sensations to percepts does require
sensory input. The brain will not develop the ability to produce percepts if
the organism is raised in a totally dark environment [i.e., without anything to
sense]. Experiments have shown that. [21]
In
other words, without sensory contact with existence, one's perceptual faculty
will produce nothing. And if one's perceptual faculty does not produce
percepts, there will be no content for the conceptual faculty (i.e., cognition)
to identify. Thus, I side with Miss Rand when she stated that the
"arguments of those who attack the senses are merely variants of the
fallacy of the 'stolen concept'." [22] And it is
this fallacy, the stolen concept, which plagues presuppositional apologetics
from the core of its foundations.
Mr.
Harrison summarizes the basic ambition of presuppositionalism for rebuffing
criticism of Christianity:
We
also demonstrate that whatever objections he may have against Christianity are
either a misunderstanding of true Christianity, or
that they are not legitimate objections within the Christian worldview.
One practical problem for antireligious writers is the
diversity of religious views. However carefully a skeptic frames his attacks,
he will be told that what people in fact believe is something different. For
example, when Terry Eagleton, a British critic who
has been a professor of English at
In other words, the apologist can always respond
to an objection by saying “that’s not what we believe!” (Watch for the “we”
expressions in such cases; the use of the plural here is often an attempt to
inflate numbers for their intimidating effect.) Such protestations are
typically followed by contemptuous aspersions to the effect that only an
ignoramus would think that Christians would endorse the view in question.
As for
There
are, of course, two possibilities which
Without
stopping to consider any of this,
And
so we examine the cogency of each side's theory within the respective
worldviews.
While
on the surface such a strategy may seem rationally plausible. However, Harrison
has already shown that if the opposing side raises any objections to
Christianity, those objections reduce to misunderstanding, or are simply “not
legitimate objections within the Christian worldview.” Moreover, on
deeper penetration such a policy implies that both worldviews in question are
restricted to purely self-referential criteria, and thus void of some external standard
to provide their ultimate reference point. In the case of Objectivism, that
reference point is reality, the realm of existence, the realm of fact, which is
something external to the mind developing its worldview. In contrast to this, religious
belief has been shown to be built on purely self-referential fundamentals,
fundamentals which have no objective reference to reality. [24]
By
eliminating the need for an objective point of reference on which to base one's
worldview, one declares that rational standards are fundamentally important and
that anything but Man's reason is important. Thus, his emotions, his whims, his
imagination, his concrete-bound and cognition-disabling fantasies are elevated
above his objectivity, and logic, as a method of form only and void of an
objective basis, is free to be enlisted to effect some pretense of order and
rationality. Hence, as we saw above in Bahnsen's endorsement of Proverbs 1:7,
"The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge." In other words,
knowledge is not rooted in reason, but in emotion, an emotion which is
overwhelming and which paralyzes Man's very courage to assert his mind as
independent of others.
The
Christian, within the Christian worldview, can account for rationality, logic,
science, morality, etc., because we are thinking God's thoughts after Him, and
thus conforming to reality. The unbeliever, since his worldview does not
conform to reality (i.e., denies God) cannot account for any of these things.
Here
the apologist explicitly acknowledges the presuppositionalist inclination to
hijacking "rationality, logic, science, morality, etc." as belonging
to its mystical premises, even though the bible nowhere speaks of rationality,
logic, or science, and nowhere provides a principled understanding of morality.
He acknowledges that a valid worldview should conform to reality, but he
equates reality with God. Yet on every philosophical essential, as we have
seen, Christian theism rejects objective reality explicitly and man's means of
identifying it, which is reason. Thus statements as the one here are patently
and irremediably false.
This
is not to say that any non-Christian or non-theistic worldview is
consistent with objective reality and rationality. Indeed, atheism as such is a
negative and has meaning only in regard to god-belief; it is not its own
worldview. That one is an atheist only tells us what he does not believe or
affirm, and leaves completely open what he does believe and the convictions he
may hold and advocate. This is why man has such a profound need for
Objectivism, for it is the only philosophy which begins explicitly with
objective reality and never departs from it.
And
so, in a nut shell, the apologist engages in an internal critique of the
opposing worldview in order to demonstrate that it is arbitrary (moral
relativism, for instance), inconsistent with itself (he knows through
observation, but cannot observe that observation is the way to know), and lacks
the preconditions for knowing anything at all (he has no basis for the
existence of universal abstract entities like logic and morality).
Notice
that this procedure assumes that the opposing worldview in question is in fact
arbitrary; it presupposes that opposing positions are wrong, and sets
out to “prove” this, even if it involves recourse to stock refutations of a
position that is not affirmed by the opposing worldview (such as moral
relativism). This apologetic approach tends to inculcate in its practitioners a
false sense of security through its reliance on a wide assortment of such useless
tactics. On that note, however, how does Christian theism guard its serious
adherents from the very moral relativism to which it accuses non-Christian
philosophies commit their adherents? How does the Christian principle
"love thy neighbor as thyself" ensure moral objectivity? Such a
principle could never ensure moral objectivity, for it constitutes a directive
to ignore what one might know about the character of another and to value him
regardless of that person's character. How can an upstanding, moral individual,
an individual who neither expects or accepts the
unearned, either in value or in guilt, value those who do? Such a principle is
precisely what guarantees the kind of moral relativism which can destroy a
culture when practiced wholesale by an entire community.
Like
other apologists for Christianity,
We
can then take anything which seems to be important to the unbeliever and
demonstrate to him that if his own worldview were true,
his belief would be incoherent and/or meaningless. As Bahnsen says, "In
short, the transcendental critique of unbelieving worldviews aims to show that,
given their presuppositions, there could be no knowledge in any field
whatsoever--that it would be impossible to find meaning or intelligibility in
anything at all."
By
Bahnsen's own acknowledgment, presuppositionalism - or, the
"transcendental critique" - as such is not geared toward an objective
analysis of opposing worldviews (as I have provided in regard to Christianity
above), but to assaulting the minds of non-believers so that they accept the
apologists stolen concepts unwittingly, through straw-manning non-believing
philosophies, complex questions, leading questions, alleging neglected onuses,
hijacking legitimate philosophical issues and retrofitting them with
questionable premises, and inscribing logical reversals. The twists and turns
of the presuppositionalist's intellectual meandering are indeed difficult to
follow at first blush. But with some principled scrutiny and devoted attention
span, that meandering path can be identified and inoculated for intellectual
predators.
Then
Note
that this is not to say that unbelievers do not reason or communicate or engage
in science. It does say that when they do so, they are borrowing from the
Christian worldview, which only makes sense, regardless of what they might say,
the Bible says that they actually do know God.
If
"makes sense" is a measure of a worldview's validity (and if by
"makes sense" one means "objectively comprehensible"), then
I can see no alternative than to reject Christian theism as an over-burdened,
reversal-laden, contradiction-saturated collection of myth and overindulged nonsense.
Such is the invention of misguided minds, intellectually stranded by stolen
concepts and conceptually marooned by frozen abstractions. I am entirely
convinced that every argument for God's existence which I have reviewed and
examined is deeply fallacious, and that the ultimate flaw at the root of all
such arguments is the same error: stolen concepts necessitating pure
self-reference, package-deals socked with reverse packaging. The
presuppositional apologetic, one of the more philosophically developed forms of
religious apologetics, offers undeniable evidence for my findings.
Like
a stupefied boy in blindfolds swinging a bat at an unmovable, impenetrable
piñata, the presuppositionalist fails to acquire clear aim at rational
philosophy, for he must assume the validity of its very premises before he can
even reach for his bat. And if that bat should strike any hits, it is his own
stolen concepts which those hits ultimately reveal, and consequently he will
lose his intellectual balance and flee to the arbitrariness enshrined by his
god-belief. This is why so many presuppositionalists abandon debate unless they
believe they have their opponent outnumbered.
The
inherent arbitrariness of the apologist’s god-belief may take the form of a
claim to revelation (i.e., that he has possession of all knowledge already), or
of alleged "mysteries" to which only "the chosen" have
access. This access must be given to man deliberately, it is held, for man can
do nothing on his own, let alone obtain the truth. (Man was, of course, created
in this perfect creator’s image.) Nor can the knowledge of the
divine nor the means by which it is allegedly acquired be discovered or
earned by man through his own effort, cognitive or otherwise. Its purpose is to
enable evasion and to rationalize away the tracks leading to those evasions.
Notice
how profoundly the mysticism of post-biblical Christianity figures in presuppositionalism’s sense of man’s existence:
And
it is that triune God of the Bible that is behind all of man's experiences and
intellectual efforts. And so the Presuppositional Apologetic recognizes that
the critic of Christianity has been secretly presupposing the truth of the
faith even as he argues against it.
Statements
like these are found throughout presuppositionalist rhetoric. They are
deliberately presumptuous and calculated to generate heat, not light. The root
of such statements is the primacy of consciousness view of reality and nature.
To make sense of our "experiences and intellectual efforts,"
presuppositionalists point out, we must assume the
uniformity of nature and the laws of logic, which is not contested by
Objectivism. However, to assume the uniformity of nature and the laws of logic,
argue presuppositionalists, one must assume the existence of the "triune
God of the Bible," since, as some presuppositionalists might say, God, as creator
and sustainer of the universe, is the agency responsible for the uniformity of
nature and the validity of logic. Thus, according to this view, to employ logic
and to assume the uniformity of nature, one is necessarily and "secretly
presupposing the truth of the faith even as he argues against it."
I
argue that this view is the result of a fundamental derailment of knowledge
from its hierarchical order, resulting in a reversal of metaphysical
priorities, and of a fundamentally false view of reality altogether.
As
Bahnsen has said, it is like a person arguing that air does not exist, all the
while breathing air as a precondition for his ability to argue. In conclusion,
the only "proof" of Christianity is the impossibility of the
contrary.
Man
denying air while breathing it is not at all analogous to man using his own
mind (which he introspectively can know exists) while recognizing that
fictional beings are in fact fictional. And
Unless
the Christian position is presupposed, at a conscious or unconscious level,
there is no possibility for proving anything.
In
other words, unless the truth of the Christian's god-belief
claims are presupposed to begin with, there is no possibility for
proving them. But if these claims are presupposed as true to begin with, then
all effort to prove them would end up begging the question. While most
non-believers (and indeed many believers as well) immediately recognize the
invalidity of presuppositionalism, presuppositionalists themselves insist that
all worldviews end up begging the question, including non-theistic worldviews,
since circular reasoning, they believe, is unavoidable for man. The erroneous
nature of this position is dealt with in numerous essays posted at this site. [25]
As
is typical with this strain of religious apologetics,
When
it is all said and done, the unbeliever will have two options:
Many
will choose to do just that, although they will deny that is what they are
doing. After all, proving is not the same as persuading. But in any case, the
apologetic purpose will have been fulfilled. The hope within us will have been
defended within the biblical framework.
Of
course, thinkers generally do not want to go on record as rejecting rationality.
The fundamental error supporting this gimmick, however, is that it overlooks
the fact that the basis of rationality is the primacy of existence, the very
principle which Christian god-belief thwarts by its adherence to the primacy of
consciousness view of reality. Rationality does not assume that consciousness
holds metaphysical primacy over its objects: it does not assume that
consciousness has the power to dictate the outcomes of inquiries about reality,
inferences from facts, scientifically conducted experiments; that the world of
objects conforms to the content of consciousness, that wishing does not make
reality what it is. On the contrary, rationality assumes that the role of
consciousness is to perceive, discover and identify what exists and what is
real. But Christianity is certainly not consistent with this fundamental
principle. It enshrines the notion of a universe-creating, reality-ruling
consciousness to whose content everything directly and immediately conforms. It
created the universe by an act of "will" and controls every event
that takes place in the world throughout history by means of its "plan."
This entire conception clearly assumes the ontological priority of
consciousness over its objects.
NOTES
_____________________________________
[1] Taken from the anonymous online article Natural Theology, associated with the Theology on the Web site, a source demonstrably sympathetic to Christian
theism.
[2] Quoted from Bahnsen's short essay Van Til's 'Presuppositionalism'.
[3] Quoted from Mr. Anderson's post to the Van Til Discussion list, dated September 19, 1998, titled Good Reasons.
[4] For elaboration on this matter, see my article God and Pure Self-Reference, in my Letters to a Young Atheologist series.
[5] Quoted from Bahnsen's short article Autonomy is No Ladder to Christ's
Supreme Authority.
[6] "The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of
Selfishness, (New York: Signet, 1964), pp. 20-21.
[8] Quoted in Leonard Peikoff's The
Ominous Parallels, (New York: Meridian, 1993), p. 33.
[9] The apologist above writes that "the unbeliever
cannot reason autonomously." It is unlikely that those who believe that
unbelievers "cannot reason autonomously" will turn around and claim
that believers do reason autonomously, if by "autonomous" the
believer means "without guidance and/or approval of God's will and/or
law." For the believer naturally claims that his "thought" is in
"accordance" with God's will and/or law, lest he be deemed by his own
worldview to have fallen from grace and into sin, which would soil his
credibility from a perspective internal to Christianity. (Indeed, there's
strong reason for non-believer's to question the believer's credibility to
begin with, which I will detail in an upcoming essay titled "Considering
the Source." Paul's own statement in Romans 3:4 - "let God be true,
but every man a liar." If the apologist is a man, and it is the case that
every man is a liar, then the apologist himself is a liar. If the apologist
claims that he does not speak for himself, but on behalf of "God's
truth," he still does not escape the lack of credibility to which the
Bible itself condemns him.)
[10] Cf. the claim that matter as such is
"contingent"; upon what is matter said to be contingent? Upon God, i.e., upon an alleged form of consciousness.
[11] Cited from Bahnsen's short essay Van Til's 'Presuppositionalism'. "Christ," according to
Christians, is God, hence "Christianity" (internal confusions
resulting from the doctrine of the trinity and its non-cognitive fallout
notwithstanding). Readers are invited to examine my critique of this short
essay.
[12] "Philosophy: Who Needs It," Philosophy:
Who Needs It, (New York: Signet, 1984), p. 7.
[13] For further development of how the claim "God
exists" is self-contradicting, see my critique of Eric Smallwood's
apologetic and The
Contradiction of Theism, an upcoming installment in my Letters to a
Young Atheologist series.
[14] A good example of this emphasis will be seen in Mark
McConnell’s 7 July 2000 message to the Van Til list (archived here),
in which the apologist questions the non-believer's ability to achieve
cognitive certainty when he "is not aware of any principle by which he can
know where the cosmos came from." In other words, one's notions about the
origin of the cosmos, according to this view, should hold primacy over
principles which are derived from the perceptually self-evident facts of
reality. Obviously this course of inquiry can be extended ad nauseum in an effort to smoke out the inability to answer,
which is the chief aim here. Should one point to something beyond “the cosmos”
as the source “where the cosmos came from,” one can easily ask where that
source came from, and so on. This course of apologetic inquiry is easily lent
to an infinite regress. The goal here is not to enlighten the mind with
legitimate knowledge, but to create doubt in the minds of one’s audience and to
exploit that doubt in an effort to beat those minds to a shapeless pulp.
Another
example of how many apologists emphasize the primacy
of alleged history over the present and verifiable, perceptually self-evident
facts of reality, is seen in the case of scrutinizing a non-believer's
rejection of the Christian doctrine of miracles. Non-believers will often point
out the absurdity of the doctrine of miracles by rightly arguing that such a
doctrine contradicts the facts of reality (since 'miracle' is a violation of
the law of identity). Rather than arguing positively on behalf of the alleged
instances of miracles in the attempt to prove that indeed a miracle has
happened as he claims, the apologist insists that the non-believer justify his
rejection of the allegation of the miraculous, and perhaps even prove that the
alleged miracle(s) in question did not happen. In such a way, the
apologist is often inclined to argue negatively - i.e., to call into
question one's rejection of Christianity, and to substitute this negative kind
of assault on non-believers for a positive substantiation and justification of
his god-belief claims.
[15] It should also be noted that it is the direct
opposite which holds true in the relationship between philosophy and history. For history as such does not inform a comprehensive view of
life, which is the task of philosophy, which Christian theism attempts to do by
retroactive inference. In sharp contrast to this, Objectivism recognizes
that philosophy, more than any other factor, dictates and directs the course of
human history. (See Ayn Rand, For
the New Intellectual, p. 28; Philosophy: Who Needs It, p. 200; et
al.) Since history is the result of ideas put into action on both local
and large scales, we would be wise to recognize the influence of a particular
philosophical viewpoint on the historical development (or stagnation) of a
culture, rather than expect particular historic events to substitute for
philosophical principles. In this context, Christian theism as a candidate for
philosophy commits a reversal of colossal proportions.
[16] For articles on Objectivism, the Philosophy of
Reason, see my Objectivist
links page.
[17] Indeed, some religious apologists hold that man is
incapable of objectivity. One such believer, himself a Christian, took the
opportunity to tell me so. See my correspondence An Aborted Rise to Challenge for my response to this
individual.
[18] For further reading on the absolute nature of
Objectivist morality, I strongly suggest Ayn Rand's
brilliant and original essay, "The Objectivist Ethics," in her book The
Virtue of Selfishness.
[19] Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged,
p. 957.
[20] Volition as Cognitive Self-Regulation,
(Oceanside, CA: Second Renaissance Books, 1991), p. 8.
[21] Harry Binswanger,
"The Metaphysics of Consciousness," Tape 3, Side A.
[22] Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p.
4.
[23]
“Atheists with Attitude,” The New Yorker, May 21, 2007.
[24] Again, see particularly my letter God and Pure Self-Reference for a fuller exposition of the
purely self-referential foundations of god-belief.
[25] For instance, see my correspondence Presuppositionalist
Circularities, which documents one leading presuppositionalist's own
admission that his system relies on circular fallacy. See also TAG and the
Fallacy of the Stolen Concept. Or, suppose someone came up to you and suggested
that, “unless the [truth of Alice in Wonderland] is presupposed, at a
conscious or unconscious level, there is no possibility for proving anything.”
How is the presuppositionalist position essentially different from this?
[26] Notice with Christianity that we are not expected to
accept, for instance, that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist but not born
of a virgin, or that he lead a preaching ministry in
and about
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